Category Archives: miscellaneous

Post navigation

We recently found out that 462 Halsey is one of 181 sites (including 16 other community gardens) on the HPD list for development to “affordable housing.” 462 Halsey fully supports the need for affordable housing in Bed Stuy, but that is NOT what is proposed for 462 Halsey.** Please join us to keep our garden from being turned into condos.

The best way to help save the garden is to contact your City Council Member and ask them to save all 17 at-risk community gardens. If you live in Bed Stuy, please contact Robert Cornegy – phone calls and letters are best: (718-919-0740) or snail mail (613 Throop Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11216). Please be sure to include our information: 462 Halsey Community Garden, Block 1664 Lot 40. Please sign our petition as well. If you want to get more involved, please email 462halsey@gmail.com or come to our next meeting, February 3, 7:30 at 180 Bainbridge – common room.

At 462 Halsey we leave our gates open to welcome all of our neighbors to enjoy their local community garden anytime. For some, this means sharing in our free harvest of fruits, vegetables and herbs that we grow communally. For some it means relaxing in the shade of our pavilion or a post-work BBQ. For others it’s a convenient place to drop off their food scraps. For kids it’s a place to run, climb, get their hands dirty, learn to grow food and reconnect with nature.

Since we opened in 2012, our neighbors have dropped off nearly 20 TONS of food scraps, keeping scraps out of landfills. We process this into compost to feed our plants. We host a Fresh Food Box program in the summer, providing cheap, local, healthy food to around 75 households a week. We host parties, concerts, arts workshops, planting & compost education days, Know Your Rights workshops and more. We are a local resource for new farmers, people concerned about soil toxicity and innovative compost techniques. Please help save our garden!

** The city is targeting 17 gardens in their Request for Qualifications (RFQ) of approximately 180 potential development sites (selected from HPD’s inventory of approximately 1000 parcels). 462 Halsey is one of these. We do not want the fight to save Halsey to read as a fight against affordable housing. We are full in support of real affordable housing but that is not what is proposed for 462 Halsey.

HPD is accepting RFQs from developers to develop “affordable” housing. There are two options, rental and units for sale. The median income for our area as established by the federal government includes the very wealthy suburbs of NY and all of the very wealthy parts of NYC. Developers will have the option of charging $3200 for an apartment for a family of four with a targeted income of $83,900 to $109,070. Co-ops and condos in 15 to 30 unit buildings will be available for a family of four making $138,435. The median income in Bed Stuy is $52,253 – and we can’t forget that this figure is skewed by the income inequality inherent in any rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

There aren’t many things to get excited about around this time. Summer is ending, and with it are the hopes and dreams of all the summer things you wanted to do and kept putting off. The leaves will turn, and they will be glorious, but not as glorious as an ice-cold mojito at a roof-top summer shindig.

Today, while manning the post during a shift for our grow-nyc produce box pick-up, I got excited. Not by the rain that came before we could take shelter, and not by the beautiful and alluring array of farm fresh food amidst a sea of wilting and depressing produce that is found in our neighborhood grocery stores. I got excited by a woman, or better yet, by what she taught me today.

During our pick up times, we like to spice things up with cooking demos for the masses of people who appreciate a little kitchen knowledge sharing and today was no exception. Today our amazing chef KalaLea of Why Did I Eat That? prepared a deceptively filling dish of chia seed pudding topped with cooked apples and plums, leaving me swelling with excitement to go and try it at home!

And in the tradition of knowledge sharing, I now bring this recipe for the chia seed pudding to you: